Killing Lars Hedegaard

Did you know that Lars Hedegaard, a leading Danish critic of Islamic extremism in his country, survived an assassination attempt yesterday? I didn’t. It wasn’t reported widely here. Danish police are now searching for a suspect they describe as foreign-born. Mark Steyn comments:

Can we get over the idea that it’s “dangerous” to be Mark Steyn. It’s actually rather benign and highly profitable.

And I responded:

Well, it’s dangerous to be Lars Hedegaard, or Lars Vilks, or Geert Wilders or Ayaan Hirsi Ali – while there’s surely nothing safer than peddling “dangerous” “edgy” cobwebbed multiculti pieties and knowing that, whatever words you utter, there will never come a day when you’ll be called on to bet your house and your savings and perhaps your life on them.

That’s what Lars did this morning, in one of the oldest free societies on earth. On the Continent, for the few who talk about Islam and Europe life is not “benign and highly profitable” but comes at a very steep price.

Steyn updates his post to quote the Danish prime minister as deploring the attempt by this would-be murderer to silence Hedegaard’s freedom of speech. Steyn notes acidly that this would carry a lot more weight if the Danish government hadn’t already convicted Hedegaard for “hate crimes” in using his freedom of speech — a conviction unanimously overturned by the Danish Supreme Court, by the way.

Don’t forget Pym Fortuyn. He was assassinated in 2002 by a white leftist for opposing massive Muslim immigration. The immediate response of respectable European politicians and newspapers was mostly that he had it coming.

I’ve never read Lars Hedegaard, but defending the free speech rights of Geert Wilders is like defending the free speech rights of George Lincoln Rockwell. I’m a bit skeptical of Ayaan Hirsi Ali too. Both launch what amount to broadsides against Islam, as Islam. That’s not the same as highlighting that SOME PEOPLE who claim to be practicing Islam indulge in methods that are objectively to be condemned and suppressed, no matter what secular or spiritual cause they are wrapped in.

I’m sure if I developed a public profile, a Salafist could be inspired to murder by what I would say, but they would have a harder time passing it off as anti-Islam, because I have nothing against Islam. I’m just opposed to violence and intimidation, whether in the name of Islam, FLDS, Church of Jesus Christ Christian, or the Jewish Defense League.

Ivan’s use of a pronoun without clear antecedent leaves one wondering whether he believes Hedegaard or the attempted killer would be in prison… If Ivan refers to Hedegaard, Ivan apparently hasn’t read Geert Wilders eloquent praise for our First Amendment. If Ivan refers to the killer, Ivan is correct.

P.S. Three cheers for the Danish Supreme Court.

[Note from Rod: Oh for heaven’s sake, whatever Wilders’s shortcomings, he is by no means a Nazi. Good grief. And do you know what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has endured, and triumphed over? Whether or not her judgments about Islam are entirely accurate or fair, neither you nor I are fit to shine her shoes. I mean that. — R.]

“Oh for heaven’s sake, whatever Wilders’s shortcomings, he is by no means a Nazi. Good grief.”

No. Any attempt at maintaining your country’s demographics, even simply religious/cultural, and most certainly racial, is clear cut evidence of Nazi-ism. Of course, by that standard, Cochise was a Nazi avant-la-letre.

Nothing makes my blood boil like Islamists who move to developed western countries to take advantage of the rule of law and basic human rights and then turn around and demand that these same western democracies impose the same kind of medieval laws that keeps their home countries mired in tribal culture.

You move here, you put up with our degeneracy. In return, you get a better standard of living. That should be the deal.

I meant that Lars Hedegaard would be in prison, sharing a cell with with the “Innocence of Muslims” director. I’m not being 100% serious, but it does seem obscene that Nakoula Kanoula’s transgressions suddenly became an issue when the President and the Secretary of State decided to blame him for riots in Egypt, Libya, and Lord knows where else. An oddball making fun of a religion on the internet is now officially worthy of the US President’s personal opprobium and attention; calls are made, signals given, and gosh, wouldn’t you know it, we have all sorts of reasons to put that oddball away for a long time. It’s not the sort of thing you associate with the US.

I still have gotten an answer from all the lefties that claim that diversity enriches a country, in what way has Denmark benefited from all this diversity ?

The Danish left has allies who are willing to go all-out against the Danish right. That’s what this is all about: the left wants most of all to see the right destroyed, and since most of them had few children, they’re going to import muscle to get it done. It may not be good for the country as a whole, but the people behind it rarely identify strongly with their homelands to begin with.

During his testimony Wednesday, Thandiwe suggested that his reason for even purchasing the gun he used in the shootings was to enforce beliefs he’d developed about white people during his later years as an anthropology major at the University of West Georgia.

“I was trying to prove a point that Europeans had colonized the world, and as a result of that, we see a lot of evil today,” he said. “In terms of slavery, it was something that needed to be answered for. I was trying to spread the message of making white people mend.”

Notice the lack of calls to blame “anti-racists” for this crime and that no prominent pundits are suggesting that the left ought to tone back its rhetoric about white privilege to avoid inflaming people like this (that is, in contrast with the media reaction to Jared Lee Loughner).

Siarlys: “I’m a bit skeptical of Ayaan Hirsi Ali too. ”
Skeptical about what? Read her 2 autobiographies. They are easy to read, (not so easy to stomach). That should at least clarify your skepticism one way or another.

Look, you can love diversity all you want. You can think it is a very great thing. You can think that no fun can be had until it’s present. But the bottom line is this: diversity creates conflict. There is no way around that.

“That’s what this is all about: the left wants most of all to see the right destroyed, and since most of them had few children, they’re going to import muscle to get it done. It may not be good for the country as a whole, but the people behind it rarely identify strongly with their homelands to begin with.”

Congrats MattSchwartz. You get it. That’s the thread that connects Episcopalian bishops who would rather sell ‘their’ property to Muslims than to a local, traditionalist parish with the leftist Canadian ‘New Democratic Party’ and its coalition of Muslim polygamists with white homosexuals. Waypoints could be multiplied. It’s just all about destroying your enemy, namely, the people who built the society which supplies the fat that sustains you. The old boy Freud was onto something with this Oedipus complex and the desire of the child to kill — nay, extirpate — the father.

Homogeneity isn’t strictly necessary either (nor is it sufficient, obviously). Plenty of places exist where different groups get along fine, and the occasional act of violence is denounced by both sides.

Let me clarify my question, its not simply about a Muslim trying to kill a Dane, Denmark produced people like Nils Bohr, thats when the country was sickeningly un diverse. So clearly “diversity” is not required to produce great people, nor is it required to create rich economies. Nor is it feasible that should Denmark become say 60% Somalian by demographics, would it retain what it built up, no matter how many clever sophistries EngineerScotty would try to conjour up to defend this.

From my point of view there’s a problem with homogeneity. As an odd duck who doesn’t fit in, I’d likely get bounced from any sort of homogeneous group. But with a freak show around me I seem positively normal.

I’m not familiar of the writings of Hedegaard, but I love Steyn’s writings (is there anyone funnier writing about politics today?) so will take his word about vouching for the guy. This sounds like it fits a severe form of the leftist multiculturalist model of “Don’t be paranoid, nothing is going to happen. Besides, they have it coming.”

——

“Both launch what amount to broadsides against Islam, as Islam.”

Yeah, and no one ever launches broadsides against Christianity, as Christianity (Dawkins, Hitchens, come to mind first.) and if they did leftists of the world would unite in extolling the virtues of the peaceable vast majority of Christians. After all, I’ve noticed all the dissenting commenters on Rod’s blog always begin their statements with “I know the vast majority of American Evangelical Christians are wonderful, peace-loving and neighbor-loving people who hold down jobs and try their best to raise their kids well, but….” Why is Islam supposed to be exempt from broadsides when other religions are not?

“Oh good grief…” As Ronald Reagan used to say, “there you go again.” Obviously if defending Geert Wilders free speech is analogized to defending George Lincoln Rockwell’s, therefore I must believe Wilders is building crematoria. Nonsense.

Geert Wilders is peddling odious religious bigotry, and to the extent I defend his freedom of speech, it is despite the fact that I despise what he stands for. The reason we all need to defend freedom of speech is that none of us trusts The State (or religious leaders) to parse which speech is legitimate and which speech should be suppressed. So, we put up with all of it.

As to Ayan Hirshi Ali, what I’m skeptical about is that she has taken her own personal experiences, horrendous as they are, and blamed them on Islam, generically. The fact is, female genital mutilation is a practice that pre-dates Islam, continues in some area that converted to Islam, is not practiced in Muslim areas that didn’t previously practice it, and is even defended in the name of Christianity by some east African Christian communities (that practiced it before they converted).

In short, her life story is breathtaking, but her conclusions and choice of political alliances are not automatically worthy of the same respect.

Note to Josh McGee: I truly enjoy skewering Richard Dawkins, and have done so on this very site. What are you trying to prove? That is someone, somewhere, launches broadsides against Christianity, which you imply is unjustified, therefore anyone, anyhere, is justified in launching broadsides against Islam, Judaism, Buddhism… ?

No, to clarify, I don’t have huge issues with broadsides in general. (That’s not to say I ever/always agree with them or how often I think they are pointing to something accurate). I’ve noted on one of Rod’s post for the Hitchens/Sullivan transcript that there can be benefits to the directness of a broadside from Hitcens to some believers (not all) because it forces them to examine their own beliefs.

I just find it funny that broadsides against Islam are almost routinely frowned upon or always noted with The Disclaimer about the peaceful nature of its adherents in a way that broadsides against other religions are not. I’m reminded of a few years back when Comedy Central had (maybe they still do?) an editorial policy of censoring certain skewering of Islam without applying that same policy to other religions. If memory serves, this editorial policy mostly applied to South Park and The Daily Show.

Another reason I find this funny is that it seems The Disclaimer about most followers of Muhammed being peaceful, loving neighbors seems to be used more than with other religions because the people using the disclaimer are afraid that if they don’t use it those wildcats might kill somebody. In other words, “These people are peaceful, but don’t publish that cartoon in the Danish paper because those wildcats might kill someone over it.”

That is, of course, not always the case and with people that use The Disclaimer across the board for all religions or who generally dislike all broadsides, I have no issue.

One last clarification….I have no issue with The Disclaimer. I just find its selective use to be very hilarious.

Fair enough Josh. If someone were to ask me whether Muslims are peaceful, I would ask, which ones?

Islam began among some fractious tribes who raided each other for fun and profit, and had done so for generations. They proceeded to conquer the remnants of two degenerate empires that had conveniently exhausted themselves in mutual warfare during the previous 30 years. Like many successful conquerors, they settled down to fight internecine wars with each other, then the survivors ruled over an empire as peaceful as that of Rome for a few centuries.

Islam now includes almost as many variations as were generated by five centuries of Protestant Reformation, although Sunni remains more dominant than Christian Orthodoxy. Some border on pacifist. Some are ready to kill heretics at the drop of a hat. Some are politically predominant. Some are rather small minorities of the countries where they live. Some live dreamy lives in the desert worshipping long-dead saints, until others, more warlike, come in pick-up trucks to pulverize the shrines of said saints into dust.

Are Christians peaceful? Which ones?

I would have to say the most secularized Christians are the most peaceful, and the most fervent Christians are the most militant and warlike. Not unlike the Muslims actually.

We could agree though that saying “Islam is a religion of peace” makes no more sense as a broad generalization than “Christians do not serve in the army.”

The Lewis trilemma is addressed not to thoroughgoing atheists, who are quite happy to consider Jesus deluded and no one worth heeding. But rather to people who say “Oh, Jesus was a great moral teacher and prophet”. It’s really weird to say with one breath “He was a nutcase who thought he was God” and “He had some profound moral inssights”

“From my point of view there’s a problem with homogeneity. As an odd duck who doesn’t fit in, I’d likely get bounced from any sort of homogeneous group. But with a freak show around me I seem positively normal.”